Can We Please Stop Misusing Challenge and Support???

Student affairs interview season is almost upon us! Thousands of eager second-year graduate students and disgruntled-with-their-first-job-young-professionals will scurry about participating in the annual placement exchange circus. This highly ritualized, often maligned, and largely ineffective process of hiring staff is more akin to sorority recruitment than to an actual job interview, but every year we prep our grads and young professionals for this routine like a nervous mother preparing her 5 year-old for his first day of kindergarten.

“Don’t forget to write thank you notes.”

“Make good eye contact and have a firm handshake.”

“Be sure to dress appropriately.”

“Make sure to prepare follow up questions for each interview.”

Well, today I’d like to add another admonition to the list of reminders we share with our little mentees as they prepare to engage in this annual student affairs rite of passage:

“Stop misusing Sanford’s Theory of Challenge and Support.”

It’s inevitable. Some smarty pants graduate student, eager to show how much they paid attention in their student development theory class, will find a way to talk about their favorite theorist during their interview when asked about their advising style, and they’ll make some banal comment like this:

“Sometimes I push my students to figure things out on their own, and sometimes I help them out with whatever project they’re working on. You know, challenge and support.”

This attitude is akin to some young mother in the middle of potty-training her toddler saying “Well, sometimes I make him wipe his own ass, and sometimes I wipe it for him. You know, challenge and support.”

This isn’t what Sanford was talking about. Not even close.

When Sanford told us that student growth required adequate amounts of both challenge and support, he was not intending for his theory to be used in a vacuum to describe how hands-on or hands-off we treat the students we advise or supervise. But more often than not, this is how I hear young (and old) professionals in our field (mis)use his theory.

When Sanford offered us his theory of challenge and support, he meant for his theory to be used in combination with other theories, to help us understand how students grow along a certain developmental trajectory.

Take moral development, for example. Sanford would argue that in order for a student to move from pre-conventional (obedience to authority) to conventional (social norms) levels of moral development, students need an adequate amount of challenge (i.e. forcing them to question their own beliefs and where they come from) and support (giving them safe spaces with like-minded others, free from constant challenge). Too much challenge, and the student may regress or rebel, yielding no growth. Too much support, and the student is never pushed to think differently, yielding no growth. The key is finding the right balance, giving the student enough challenge, but not too much challenge, to safely push them down their developmental path.

Sanford only works, and should only be applied, in conjunction with other theories (be they cognitive development, psycho-social development or identify development). It was never intended as a stand-alone theory to use in describing your advising style.

So, if you’re prepping for job interviews and want a pocket theory to drop in, only use Sanford if you plan on talking about another theory. Don’t make this common mistake that too many in this field often make.

And if you’re on the other side of the table conducting interviews, and some eager-beaver graduate student flagrantly misuses Sanford in this way, stop the interview, give them a puzzled look, and ask them.

“So, do you wipe your students’ behinds, or do you make them wipe their behinds for themselves?”

A Tale of Two Sororities (Or, Perhaps Its Time to Stop Evaluating Sororities Based on Recruitment Strength)

It is time to stop using recruitment statistics as a measure of chapter quality.

I have long felt this way, and I have long known that I am not the only person who feels this way, but I could never really conclusively prove why I felt this way.

Until now.

Let me tell you about two sorority chapters I had the chance to work with on a recent campus visit.

Sorority A is the top-recruiting chapter in their campus Panhellenic community of six NPC sororities. They have great members – women who are involved on campus, who excel academically, and who win award after award after award. SGA officers. Homecoming queens. Greek awards. Their members are physically attractive by most definitions – slender blondes and brunettes, most of whom were likely homecoming queens in high school. Picture-perfect in every way, with the Relative Recruiting Strength to prove it.

Sorority B is on the same campus. Based on recruitment statistics, they are a “bottom tier” organization, ranking fifth out of six on campus. They readily admit that they have a lot of young women crying at their house on bid day, disappointed to have received their second choice. Their members, while attractive, are not generally considered the “classic beauties” as seen in Sorority A, and they represent a broad diversity of body types, skin colors, ethnic backgrounds, and rungs on the socio-economic ladder. They make good grades – acceptable, but rarely the best on campus. Their members are involved on campus, but rarely do they boast of a top-ranking SGA officer or homecoming queen amongst their ranks. Most campus-based advisors, and certainly most sorority headquarters staff, would consider them a “below average” chapter. In fact, this sorority’s national organization is so concerned about the chapter’s recruitment statistics that they disbanded the chapter’s local advisory board and the chapter is now advised by IHQ staff members, who spend a few weeks with the chapter every year.

But there is a deeper story to these two sororities – a story that recruiting strength statistics or the “eye test” could never tell. A story that, I would argue, should be the most important consideration of chapter quality, but one that rarely, if ever, warrants even a passing mention in those conversations.

You see, the sisterhood in Sorority A is…well, for lack of a better term….shitty.

And the sisterhood in Sorority B is off-the-charts awesome.

Sorority A measures well-below the campus and national averages on three important measures of sisterhood: belonging, support/encouragement, and common purpose (click here to read more about the five schema of sisterhood). When you talk to the members of this chapter, you understand why. They don’t see the sorority as “home” or their sisters as “family.” In fact, many of the members joined the chapter not because that is where they felt “at home,” but because of their perception of the sorority’s status on campus as “the best.” They do not feel supported by their sisters, they are not unified in any other pursuit or purpose other than maintaining their status as “the best” sorority on campus. Relative to other chapters, they do not feel connected to their sisters or to their organization’s purpose. Their outcomes as a chapter are great, but the experience itself leaves quite a bit to be desired.

Sorority B, on the other hand, is off the charts on the measures of sisterhood based on belonging, support/encouragement, and common purpose, far outpacing both campus and national averages. They genuinely love one another. They are connected to one another in meaningful ways. They support one another and take an active interest in one another’s lives and in the life of the chapter. They understand and are connected to their organization’s values, and regularly incorporate the values and ritual into their activities as a chapter. Women in the chapter are happy with their experience, are committed to one another, and feel loved and supported by their sisters.

In conversations with the leaders of Sorority B, I asked about areas where they felt they needed to improve. Their response left me astonished, sad and angry.

“Well, nationals think we really need to improve our image on campus. They want us to do more social events with the guys and to work on our image during recruitment.”

They went on to talk about the lack of confidence they have during recruitment, because of the pressure they are under to “look like and act like” the “top” chapters on campus (i.e. Chapter A). What they really want to be able to do is be themselves, and to share with prospective members their stories – stories of being disappointed on bid day, but of quickly coming to understand that they had joined a sisterhood where they weren’t judged by their outward beauty, but by their reciprocity in loving, serving, and supporting one another. Simply, they long to be authentic during recruitment, but are being told to instead work on their “image.”

My friends, if this is what we have boiled the sorority experience down to, then we have much work to do.

When we reduce our definition of a successful chapter down to Relative Recruiting Strength, we reinforce the idea that the only thing that matters is image. Sorority B, who by every conceivable measure is providing a positive and meaningful experience for its members, has been placed on national receivership, is getting multiple consultant visits per year to help the chapter “polish its image”, and is under orders to have more parties with fraternities, all because someone at their national headquarters feels their RRS should be 10 percentage points higher. And this amazing group of young women, whose love for one another can literally be felt when you walk into their chapter room, are being made to feel “less than” not by the other sororities on campus, but by the adult leaders of their own organization.

Why do we focus so much on the outcomes, and not on the experience, of sorority membership? The point of being in a sorority, or a fraternity for that matter, is not to focus all of our time and attention on some externally construed notions of success. The point of joining a sorority or fraternity is to become part of a group of people who will support you, value you, make you a better person, and provide you with a sense of shared purpose and identity. Sadly, the metrics we are using to determine the strength or quality of chapters often has little to do with any of this. We focus on grades, we focus on awards, we focus on dollars raised, and we focus on recruitment stats. And all of these metrics share one thing in common – they often have no bearing whatsoever on the experience that organizations are providing to their members.

It is time to seriously reconsider how we are measuring chapter success, how we are rewarding chapter performance, and why we are rewarding outcomes over experiences. Fraternities and sororities are co-educational offerings that should provide students with both the challenge and support necessary to help them learn and grow as humans, providing some fun memories along the way. They are not about maintaining a social image. They are not about desirability. They are not about how many homecoming queens your chapter has had in the last decade.

And they are sure as Hell not about Relative Recruiting Strength. 

Maybe We Should Stop Talking About Hazing (Or, Gentry’s Two-Pronged Hazing Test)

Catchy title, right? You probably wouldn’t expect a guy who makes his living talking about hazing to suggest that we stop talking about hazing.

Over the last four years, I’ve talked to thousands of students on dozens of campuses about hazing. These conversations have informed my perspective on hazing more than any research articles I have read (and, when it comes to hazing, I have read them all). And all of those conversations have led me to a singular conclusion – If we are talking about hazing with our students, then we are usually having the wrong conversation.

Students don’t want to talk about hazing. Very often, they are not even willing to talk about hazing. But we keep talking about it, and in all of the wrong ways. The way that professionals on most campuses talk to their students about hazing has been reduced to one of two strategies, neither of which are very effective.

Strategy #1 – "Check the Box" Education – Check the box education is where we gather all of our chapter leaders together a few times a year and go over the campus hazing policy, which inevitably includes a lengthy list of “Thou Shalt Nots.”

Thou shalt not strike thy pledges.

Thou shalt not make thy pledges consume intoxicants.

Thou shalt not deprive thy pledges of sleep.

You get the idea. At the end of this “education,” chapter leaders sign a piece of paper acknowledging that they have read the list of Thou Shalt Nots and understand that if any hazing goes on in their chapters, their asses are on the line. University lawyers love this type of programming, because if there is ever a lawsuit, the University can show where the “hazing education” box was dutifully checked and can show where the chapter in question promised not to hit their pledges but decided to do it anyways. But other than providing some legal cover to the University, this strategy does very little to stop hazing. Students will either do the things prohibited anyways, because we failed to help them come up with something better (you can read more about that here) or they’ll come up with something just as bad that you didn’t think to put on your list and then you have to decide how you’re going to deal with that.

Strategy #2 – "Live Your Values Education" – In this version of hazing prevention education, we gather students together and beg them – IMPLORE them – to live their values.

“You guys, hazing is inconsistent with who we say we are!”

“What would your founders think of the way you treat your new members?”

“Live your values and don’t haze, you guysssss!!!!  Please????”

I can just envision the “hypermasculine” new member educators rolling their eyes and tuning out…

Stop. Just stop.

If you want to start addressing the hazing culture on your campus, here is my suggestion. Stop it with the box-checking and the “live your values” guilt trips. Stop talking to students about hazing altogether. It is a loaded word - it means different things to different people, and when we talk about hazing, we end up debating what "Is" hazing and what "Is Not" hazing. Instead of engaging in this circular debate of trying to define what is and is not hazing, sit down with chapter leaders and ask them to subject all of their new member education activities to Gentry's Two-Pronged Test:

Test #1 – “Is there a group-relevant point or purpose to this activity?”

You have to start with the first test, and the key word here is “noble.” Is the purpose of the activity something that we could all agree would be a good outcome, and is the activity logically matched to producing that outcome. The outcome needs to be specific – not some vague notion of “it builds brotherhood.” What kind of brotherhood? How? To what end? Insist on specific linkages between the activity and the outcome.

If the activity does not pass the first test, then you are done. No need to go on to the second test. The activity failed. Chapters should not be doing activities with their new members that serve no noble point or purpose. Note: “Because we’ve always done that with our pledges” is not a good reason and would not pass the test. Neither would “The pledges need to learn to keep the house clean” “The pledges need to learn time management” or “The pledges need to learn to hold their liquor.”

But, many activities will pass the first test. There will be activities that are directly linked to some positive outcome, and once you have made that determination, you are free to move on to the second test.

Test #2 – “Is the activity dangerous, demeaning, excessive, or illegal?”

I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. I don’t care how noble the outcome may be from Test #1, if it meets any of the criteria in Test #2, it’s a no-go. No activity can put a new member in danger, we should be above any activities that demean or degrade new members, and none of us are in a position to allow things that are against the law.

When I bring the two-pronged test up with students, there are a few common themes that emerge when they try to push back. They’ll often ask about the pledges as sober drivers. I always hammer home Test #1 when they do. What is the point? Making members safe? Help me understand, if safety is your concern, why you don’t have a sober driver program involving all of your members? Also, I include in the “dangerous” category not only those things that are dangerous to a person’s physical well-being, but to their overall success in college. So, yeah….tell me more about how your pledges are doing sober driver programs until 4:00 in the morning and that isn’t impacting their grades?

Another one that comes up is the pledge “signature books” that so many chapters love to use. Is there a point? Ostensibly it is to help the pledges get to know the older brothers. Is it dangerous? Not in and of itself, but it can be used as a platform for those older brothers to require the pledge to do something that would violate Test #2 in order to get the signature. If you want the pledges to get to know the older brothers, I can easily help you come up with about a dozen different activities that will do a better job of accomplishing the objective without opening up the potential for “rogue members” to violate Test #2.

Notably absent from my tests are “Is the activity required of all members?” A lot of people use this test. I don’t. I don’t think that test is legitimate, because the new member education process is just that – about new members. Once you go through it as a new member, you don’t do it every year. New members can and should be asked to do things that older members are not expected to do, but only if those activities pass the two-pronged test.

The beauty of the two-pronged test is that it allows you to avoid having to categorize things as "hazing" or "not hazing." If a new member activity doesn't pass the test, it may or not be hazing, but it isn't a good activity because it doesn't pass the test. We don't have to categorize it or debate it endlessly. It didn't pass the test. Period.

My favorite example of the problem with traditional prevention education strategies is that we inevitably put things on the “list of thou shalt nots” that, if done correctly, would pass the two-pronged test. A perfect example is scavenger hunts. In the Fall of 1997, as a new member of Alpha Gamma Rho at the University of Tennessee, my fellow new members and I did a scavenger hunt. It was probably my favorite thing that we did in our entire new member program. Our new member educator obviously put a lot of time and energy into putting it together. It was designed to help us learn about important landmarks and the history of the University. We were divided into teams of 3-4, and were given clues about important or historic locations on campus. When we figured out a clue and went there, a brother was waiting there to tell us all about the building or statue, its history, its importance, and to give us our clue to the next landmark. I still remember things I learned from that scavenger hunt. And today, it would pass both of my tests. Was there a noble purpose? Yup – learning the history and important landmarks of the school made me even more excited and proud to be a student there. Was it dangerous or degrading? Not at all. We weren’t drinking, we weren’t encouraged to break the law, and we didn’t get yelled at if we didn’t solve all of the clues. It was a great new member activity – we learned a lot and had a great time in the process.

But some well-intentioned fraternity/sorority advisor on some campus today would get asked about doing a similar activity by a well-intentioned new member educator and would tell that student they couldn’t do it because at some point in the past one of their predecessors had placed “scavenger hunts” on the list of “thou shalt nots.” It is easy to just say “No” to all scavenger hunts – but it is also lazy. And it isn’t developmental or educational. If we were less concerned about enforcing policies and more concerned with helping our students think critically and develop, we’d probably be more willing to use something thoughtful like this two-pronged test instead of just reading our students a list of things they aren’t allowed to do. Intentionality is more than just a buzzword! It takes time and effort to be intentional and to actually help students think and learn. Being the captain of the “No Police” is not what any of us were hired by our campuses to do, but for whatever reason, about half of the questions I see posted on the NASPA Knowledge Community page have something to do with asinine policies. WE NEED TO BE DOING MORE THAN ENFORCING POLICIES, PEOPLE!!!

Should you still have a hazing policy that lists some specific activities? Yes, and you should make sure your students read it. Should you still be talking to students about how their behavior reflects on who they say they are, and encouraging them to be more consistent with their stated values?  Of course.  But our hazing education and prevention work needs to become more advanced if we are going to A) get students to listen to us and; B) actually do something to prevent hazing. In the New Year, let’s all commit to being more intentional and, as a result, more impactful in our work to prevent hazing.

I'm Sick and Tired of Hearing About the H-Word

Were you at the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors annual meeting closing banquet this past week in Fort Worth? If you were not, then you missed out. If you were, then you got a chance to hear Anson Award winner Tom Jelke speak some uncomfortable truths in his acceptance speech.

He asked us some really uncomfortable questions – questions that made us think about the ways in which we do our jobs. While there were a number of zingers in his speech, here was my favorite:

“Are you reaching out and developing all of your students, or just the ones with whom you feel comfortable working?”

This question, out of all of his questions, triggered something that I have been feeling now for quite some time.

In the last 5-10 years, we have alienated about 80 percent of the male students on our campuses, particularly in our fraternity chapters. We have alienated them to the point of having a name that we call them – a term that in many circles is met with derision and scorn.

We call them “Hypermasculine.” The H-Word.

Hypermasculinity has become a buzzword in student affairs in the last decade. Initially, the H-Word was used only to describe a relatively small portion of our students, and only in a clinical setting – those whose behavior exaggerated stereotypical masculine behavior, such as physical strength and sexual aggression. It was a new way of describing what had previously been referred to as “jock culture,” where physical and sexual aggression were ways of life for a small percentage of male students, particularly among male athletes. When the word first came into popular use, it was met with hostility in some circles, as some felt it was a racist term to describe black male athletes. But its use persisted. Originally just a psychological term, it came into popular use through books such as Michael Kimmel’s “Guyland: The Dangerous World Where Boys Become Men,” a pseudo-scientific tome which lamented the fact that *GASP* some men were waiting later than previous generations to get married and that *GASP Again* because of that phenomenon, many of them were living communally (i.e. they had roommates) and those roommates occasionally did crazy things like drink beer and/or play video games *AUDIBLE GASP.*

KIMMEL WAS TALKING ABOUT ME! THAT BASTARD! You see, guys like me are apparently everything that is wrong with America. We shun responsibility. We fastidiously avoid “growing up.” Whereas our fathers got married and started families in their early 20’s (by the time my father was my age, he’d been married for 18 years and had a teenage daughter), we were waiting until our late 20’s or *GASP* even our 30’s before settling down. And Kimmel said this was a huge problem!!! Never mind the fact that the divorce rate for our parent’s generation is now well over 50 percent and perhaps – just perhaps – we were trying to avoid their mistakes. Never mind the fact that, for many of us, this “delaying of adulthood” was actually used to further our educations and better prepare ourselves to be able to financially support our future families.

All of a sudden, after Kimmel’s book (and, in all fairness, others like it) became popular in student affairs circles, a lot of traditional male behaviors began getting tossed onto the Hypermasculinity trash heap. Guys living together in apartments or fraternity houses? Hypermasculine. Guys who like to hang out with their buddies and drink beer? Hypermasculine. Guys who go to the gym? Hypermasculine. Guys who have sex with women outside the confines of a committed relationship? Hypermasculine. Guys who choose to set at home on a Tuesday night and play video games instead of coming out for a program on campus? Hypermasculine, not to mention irresponsible. You get the idea.

So now, any guy who fits the traditional male gender stereotype is hypermasculine. On many college campuses, if you are a cis-gendered male, you are generally lumped into one of three categories: gay, hipster, or hypermasculine.  We have created very little room for any sort of in-between.

Here’s why all of this is a problem - Our use of the H-word is driving heterosexual college men away from engagement on our college campuses in droves. We started calling them names, and now we act surprised or frustrated when they become “disengaged.” A lot of fraternity/sorority advisors that I talk to will readily admit their discomfort or, even worse, their outright disinterest in working with “hypermasculine” fraternity men. And as a result, a population that arguably needs our support the most is getting the least support!

Need proof? The decline in men’s engagement on college campuses throughout the last decade is well documented. My guess is that on 90 percent of college campuses in America, resident assistants, orientation leaders, peer leaders, student activity board members, etc. are made up of a disproportionate ratio of gay to straight men. While survey research tells us that gay men make up anywhere from 10-15 percent of the men on our college campuses, my guess that on most campuses they outnumber straight men in these areas of student involvement by a ratio of somewhere between 2 or 3-to-1. And I don’t think it is because all of a sudden gay men started clamoring to get more involved on campus – it happened because slowly, gradually, straight men became less and less engaged, and less and less interested in getting involved in any sort of traditional student affairs engagement offerings. It happened because, somewhere along the way, student affairs professionals forgot how to sit down and have a conversation with a straight student who occasionally enjoys sex, beer and video games. And instead of reaching out to them, we’ve demonized them and started calling them the H-Word.

Want the straight men on your campus to become more engaged? Stop calling them names. Reach out to them. Talk to them. And stop blaming them for all of the problems on campus.

So many challenges we face with men on campus have mistakenly been chalked up to hypermasculinity. Hazing, for example, is often thought of as a rite of passage caught up in displays of hypermasculine behavior (and in some groups, particularly some culturally based groups where ethnic identity has taken the place of hypermasculinity, that may be the case), but in reality it is generally the result of a group-think mentality wherein groups have convinced themselves that the prize of membership is worth abusing prospective members, flexing our evolutionary impulses to not allow newcomers to immediately exploit the benefits of membership. Hazing very often has nothing at all to do with masculinity, which becomes even more evident when you consider the fact that sororities haze, too! Does hypermasculinity contribute to the severity of hazing in some cases? Possibly. But it is not the underlying cause of a culture where hazing is viewed as a requisite component of group membership. As my good friend Jeremiah Shinn likes to say, just because something seems true doesn’t mean that it is.

So what are some strategies that we can employ to re-engage all of these “Hypermasculine” men that we have slowly disengaged over the last decade, while still confronting the real problem of actual hypermasculinity?

Some of it we are already doing – we are finally targeting groups traditionally associated with hypermasculinity (fraternities, athletes, etc.) and inviting them to be part of the solution, helping them think through and challenge traditional male stereotypes and helping them better understand problems associated with the objectification of women. But we can’t stop there. We need to intentionally be recruiting men to be involved in things like orientation leaders and resident assistants, providing them with training that will allow them to be positive male role models for future new students who may then also seek out those opportunities in the future. Frankly, we need to make it cool to be involved.

I also think the work that Josh Schutts and I are doing related to brotherhood has some implications related to this conversation. In particular, chapters where solidarity or shared social experiences are viewed as the most salient forms of brotherhood also tend to have the most demonstrations of hypermasculine behavior (hazing, competitive binge drinking, fighting, etc.). Working with chapters to move beyond solidarity and towards belonging and accountability can be among the most important work we can do in changing the cultures that permit hypermasculine attitudes to thrive. This notion is backed by another study that found that individual levels of hypermasculinity did not predict sexual violence among fraternity men, but it did among non-affiliated men. The group culture in fraternities is more powerful than any individual predisposition that members may possess. If we can move chapter cultures away from solidarity and towards belonging and accountability, we can create group cultures where problematic hypermasculinity is replaced with genuine engagement, involvement and a feeling of being able to be yourself (as opposed to fitting the masculine mold) and being accepted for who you are and what you bring to your group.

Is hypermasculinty a real problem in our society? Of course it is. But instead of a disease inflicting 80 percent of our males on campus, it is a psychological disposition that impacts a small portion of men in serious ways, and a larger number of men in minor ways. It is often passed on to them through male role models in their life, popular media, violence in sports and video games, and a belief in traditional gender roles. All of these are things we can help alleviate by just having conversations with them, helping them unlearn that which society has taught them.  Let’s stop calling our students names, and start practicing what we preach by “meeting them where they are” and helping them become better.

Gentry’s Semi-Annual Rant About Bystander Training (And Why Most of Us Are Getting It Wrong)

I had a chance to work with a campus recently who was interested in doing some bystander training. I happily obliged them, but after giving them my caveat of “my research has led me to believe that bystander training on its own is not a very effective prevention tool.” But, for whatever reason, many campus administrators and “prevention specialists” have convinced themselves that bystander training is the end all, be all of prevention programs, especially in the sexual assault realm. Someone told some Congressman at a hearing that bystander training showed promise as a primary prevention strategy, it made it into some legislation and a White House report, and now most campuses feel the need to dutifully check the “bystander training” box on their compliance checklist every year. WELL I’M NOT BUYING IT!!!

As my good friend Aaron Boe (who does some amazing prevention work) likes to say, bystander intervention is not a new concept. Cavemen likely understood the concept of helping out their fellow cavemen if they found themselves in a dangerous predicament. Famed biologist E.O. Wilson discussed this concept in his book “The Social Conquest of Earth,” theorizing that natural selection has taken place along two parallel tracks – individual-level selection, and group-level selection.  Groups that were more altruistic, consisting of individuals who were willing to sacrifice their own desires for the needs of the group, tended to win out over more selfish groups, and those altruistic traits have been genetically passed down over the millennia. We’ve literally evolved to be helpful, proactive bystanders. Helping one another is in our DNA, and you certainly don’t need to pay me (or anyone else) to come talk to your students about how they can be more helpful in dangerous situations.

If you read the literature on bystander behavior (which, having written a dissertation on the topic, I can assure you I have done), you will find that there are a number of things an individual must do in order to intervene in a dangerous situation (i.e. not be a bystander). The first, and arguably most important, thing on that list is that the person must interpret the situation as an emergency worthy of intervention. People fail to correctly interpret situations as problematic for one of two reasons: ambiguity, or conformity. In ambiguous situations, it isn’t clear whether a situation is an emergency. A great example of this is the Kitty Genovese murder – one of the things that gets lost in the Kitty Genovese story is that many people who heard the attack incorrectly interpreted it as a lover’s quarrel, and not a situation that required any sort of intervention (in fact, they were often surprised to learn that a murder had taken place).

The second reason people fail to interpret events as emergencies worthy of intervention is conformity. Much has been written of conformity – most famously the Asch Study in which individuals discuss the lengths of lines and conform to the answers of those around them. A lesser known study applies directly to bystander behavior – the Latane and Darley “Smoke-Filled Room” study. In this study, individuals were placed in a waiting room in one of two conditions – alone, or with confederates (individuals who were “in on the joke,” so to speak). After a few minutes waiting, smoke began entering the room through a vent. Those in the “alone” condition immediately got up and said something to someone or left the room 75 percent of the time. But in the “with others” condition, the confederates would sit silently and pay no attention to the smoke. The research subject would notice the smoke, but then notice that everyone else seemed to be paying the smoke no mind. In such conditions, less than 10 percent of research subjects said or did anything related to the smoke. The reason they did not say or do anything is often mistakenly attributed to diffusion of responsibility (I assumed someone else would do something), but the inaction was actually due to conformity. They looked around to see how everyone else interpreted the situation. When they surmised that they were the only person interpreting the smoke as a problem, they conformed to the norms around them and decided that the smoke was not a problem after all. It isn’t that they assumed someone else would do something (diffusion of responsibility) – they assumed that nothing needed to be done because of the inactions of those around them. By conforming to the responses of those around them, they failed to correctly interpret a dangerous situation as an emergency worthy of their intervention.

So, at this point in the post, you might be asking yourself “That’s great, Gentry, but what does any of this have to do with bystander training?” It’s a fair question. I plan to answer it now.

So often, bystander training focuses on “helping skills” (please read that as “quote unquote helping skills”).  We spend hours talking about diffusion of responsibility, and telling students that if they see something they should say something, that they shouldn’t just be a bystander, and then we “teach” students how to help or intervene in a variety of dangerous situations (sexual assault, hazing, alcohol poisoning, etc.).

But here is what the bystander research tells us – that if students are not correctly interpreting situations as emergencies worthy of intervention, then all the bystander training in the world will not get them to intervene. If a situation is ambiguous, or if others are not interpreting it as an emergency, then the odds that a student will correctly interpret the situation as problematic and intervene are very, very low.

What all of this means is that bystander training needs to be context-specific. That is, until students have a critical understanding of the issue you are trying to address (sexual assault, hazing, bullying, etc.) and the harm that can be caused by those behaviors, then trying to get them to intervene when they see these situations is an exercise in futility. Before bystander training can be effective, we need to help students understand the harm that can be caused by the behaviors we are trying to curb.

My friend and colleague Aaron Boe is probably doing the most innovative work in this area as it relates to sexual assault prevention, and his ideas have informed my own in this area. In his programs for men, he starts by helping them understand the trauma that can come from having your body violated by someone else – even if it is someone you know and trust, and even if it doesn’t seem particularly “violent.” The idea behind his approach is that most of the sexual assaults on college campuses are not perpetrated by scary strangers, and they do not meet our classic definitions of violent, and as a result, many college men fail to understand the harm that can be caused in a non-stranger assault involving alcohol. His program begins by helping them understand that harm, and then moves on to ways they can improve the culture around them by creating healthier norms and not being bystanders. Critical understanding of the harm comes first, conversations about bystander behavior come second. This is a critical concept for those of you interested in doing bystander training. If your students don’t fully understand the harm that can be done by having someone do something to your body that you don’t want to happen, then getting them to intervene in any meaningful ways is a tall order.

Bystander training probably isn’t a total waste of time, and that is not the concept that I want people to take away from this post. What I want people to understand is that bystander training is only effective when it is done as part of a broader prevention program that begins with helping students understand the critical issues involved in any particular behavior. Every time I do bystander training, and I offer a scenario involving a dangerous situation and ask them how they could intervene, students are immediately able to come up with several ideas, many of which are really thoughtful and creative. Students don’t need to be trained on how to intervene. They know how to intervene. What they don’t always know is when or why they should intervene. If we spent more time helping them understand the critical issues that would give them a better understanding of when to intervene, and less time teaching them what they innately already know, then our prevention efforts would be drastically more impactful. 

Sisterhood's Biggest Impediment

Over the last few years, I have spent more time than I care to admit sitting around talking to sorority women about sisterhood. Hours and hours of conversations about sisterhood. This has not been for my health, nor has it been for my own amusement. If you are not familiar with the research that Josh Schutts, Sarah Cohen and I are doing related to sisterhood, you can read more about it here.

The least altruistic version of sisterhood, or what one woman described as the “sisterhood of selfishness,” is sisterhood based on shared social experiences.  Women who think of sisterhood in this way view the sorority as a primarily social outlet, and see the main purpose of their membership as “meeting people and having a good time.” We also see that, relative to men, women are more likely to join a group based on their perception of its social status rather than the sense of belonging and connection they feel to the group. Anecdotally, we have all experienced this. Fraternity/sorority advisors who have worked with sorority and fraternity recruitment understand this phenomenon all too well. We all know her – the PNM on preference night who sits at the voting computer in agony for hours trying to decide between her groups. Our research tells us that, very often, her inner monologue might go something like this:

“I really like Gamma Beta – I really felt a connection to those girls. I feel like I could really be at home there. But….the Kappa Theta’s are the best sorority on campus. Everyone wants to be there. I’m not sure I liked the girls as much, but would I be crazy not to rank them first? I’m so confused! I don’t know what to do!”

The agonizing choice between joining the chapter where one feels at home and connected vs. the chapter where one is likely to enjoy the highest social status is one that plays out in every recruitment voting lab on every college campus in America multiple times over.

Have you ever noticed that this agony is much less prevalent with men? How many times have you sat with a prospective fraternity member on bid day who was agonizing over his decision of which fraternity to join. In my ten years as a F/S advisor, I can remember only one. The reason for this is that men are much more likely to join the place that they feel that they best fit in. To them, the decision is easy – most men join where they feel the greatest sense of belonging. This is clearly evident in our research on brotherhood, as brotherhood based on belonging accounts for an overwhelming amount of the variance in our overall brotherhood model. This is the most salient form of brotherhood, and the type of connection that most men crave in a fraternity experience. In addition, fraternity men measure significantly higher than sorority women on the construct of belonging. Simply, the conflict between joining a chapter where you feel at home and a chapter with social clout is much more pronounced with sorority women than with fraternity men.

The fact is, a great number of women join the wrong sorority for the wrong reasons.  They join an artificially constructed social image for social reasons instead of a group of people with whom they connect. As a result, many sorority members get stuck in a schema of sisterhood in which the social aspect of the sorority takes precedence over more altruistic forms of sisterhood. Women who join the social image only care about the social image, and sisterhood suffers as a result.

Why does this happen with such regularity? Why are so many women joining sororities for the wrong reasons?

The answer, I suspect, lies in the manner in which sororities recruit their new members.

Sorority recruitment is sisterhood’s biggest impediment.

The manner in which we bring new members into sororities is the reason that so many young women join for the wrong reasons, and is the reason that more altruistic forms of sisterhood are so difficult for many chapters to attain.

I want to lay out five reasons that sorority recruitment reinforces the social nature of sisterhood at the expense of more altruistic forms of sisterhood. I will present this list not in my own words, but in the words of women we have interviewed about sisterhood in the last two years. You see, it isn’t just my opinion that sorority recruitment is problematic – it is a theme that has come up TIME AND TIME AGAIN in our hours of interviews and focus groups related to sisterhood.

So, in the words of sorority women across the country, here are five reasons that sorority recruitment is bad for sisterhood:

The Structure

“How are you supposed to really get to know someone and what they are about in 20 minutes?”

“The whole process is just one big production. It isn’t about getting to know the girls going through – it is about selling an image of what we want them the think about us. There’s no way you can really get to know the girls going through during recruitment. Once you get in and see what its really like, you become kind of jaded.”

The structure of sorority recruitment is incredibly ill-suited for allowing women to connect with one another in any sort of deep, meaningful way. Depending on the campus, the “first round” of structured recruitment is anywhere from 15-30 minutes per party. So, young women have roughly 20 minutes to find out whether or not they find a deep sense of connection and belonging with a group of people. In the meantime, they have been strictly forbidden from having any sort of conversations with sorority members for the last six months outside of a 20 minute party. The sorority is evaluating you, and you are evaluating the sorority, based on a 20 minute conversation. The entire concept is outlandish.  At the most basic level, the process works in terms of moving women through the process and having good retention through bid day, but the impression that it leaves with new members is one that reinforces the social nature of sisterhood (“I’m being evaluated based on what I’m wearing, how I look, and the impression I leave after a five minute conversation with someone who doesn’t know me at all”) that creates so many problems for our chapters. 

By forcing both chapters and potential members to make fast decisions based on very surface-level observations and conversations, we are reinforcing the very negative TSM stereotypes that we try so fastidiously to avoid. By not giving women an opportunity to connect with one another in meaningful ways, we set up a system whereby most people use social prestige as the lone measuring stick of which sorority is best for them, and chapters are left to make decisions about prospective members based on their looks and one very brief, surface level conversation.

The Videos

“The sisterhood videos are the worst thing. I hate glitter.”

“The videos are all cute, cute, fun, fun instead of what the sorority is really like.”

“OMG look we have the best sisterhood! Not really. These videos are not genuine with new members about what the experience is really like.”

The recent controversy related to the Alpha Phi recruitment video at the University of Alabama was so bizarre to me because that video was indistinguishable from the hundreds of other videos I’ve seen in the last few years. Perhaps the lakeside, bikini-clad, inflatable candy blow up toy fight was a bit over the top, but otherwise, that video was pretty milquetoast. These videos have become all the rage in recent years.

These videos usually represent the absolute worst that sororities have to offer – the surface level, social nature of sisterhood. Blowing glitter and/or bubbles into various and sundry bodies of water; holding hands and skipping through random places on campus; synchronized jumping; more glitter. You get the idea.

Who are these videos targeted towards, and exactly what message are they trying to convey? My guess is that these videos are productions whose aim and purpose is to supplant a realistic version of sorority life with a made up dream-world where everyone walks around with endless supplies of glitter in their pockets.  These videos promote the idea that sisterhood is all about looking good and having fun. As a result, the wrong women are joining sororities. These videos target the “always joiners” – those women who are joining the stereotype – instead of the maybe joiners, who really want to know how being in a sorority will add value to their college experience. Instead of serious students looking to make an impact, these videos tend to attract students who are only interested in the social aspects of sorority life.  The result? Chapters where sisterhood is a largely social construct, made up of members who joined a social image and not a group of women dedicated to making one another and society better.

The Instagram Feed

“We’ve created an environment where our members feel entitled and get upset if they aren’t featured on the chapter’s Instagram before recruitment.”

“I don’t see a lot of pictures of us studying or doing service [on the Instagram feed], which would be a more realistic depiction of what it’s really like.”

“It creates an environment where no one wants to do the work – they just want to take selfies.”

In addition to recruitment videos, highly produced Instagram photos now litter the college sorority landscape. Rare is the chapter that does not have its own Insta account, and rare is the account which doesn’t include overly produced, unrealistic, staged photoshoots. There is an arms race among sororities on most campuses to see which chapter can get the largest number of PNM’s to follow their Instagram account. Those who follow these accounts are bombarded with images that bear little to no resemblance of what sorority life actually entails.

Much like the videos, the Instagram accounts promote a sisterhood of superficiality – where pretty members do pretty things in pretty outfits, flashing the sorority hand sign in conspicuous places. I have never seen a chapter Instagram account feature pictures from a chapter service project, a late night study session, or any other “real” activities that go on in a sorority on a daily basis. Instead of seeing and joining what is “real,” prospective members are bombarded with and join artificially constructed images that are anything but real.

The Skits

“The skit – it’s all about trying to seem to be something we aren’t.”

“I think [the skit] is about social status and fun and how we look rather than promoting or attaining values.”

Skits during recruitment have long been the whipping-boy of the “no-frills” movement. It is surprising, then, that so many campus Panhellenic recruitment processes still feature some variation of a skit night. Proponents of the skit love to point out that skits give the chapter an opportunity to “showcase its personality.” This viewpoint is not shared by the majority of the women I have spoken to in the last two years. They view skits no differently than they view videos or any other productions that portray an unrealistic version of sisterhood.

The skit is problematic not only in that it usually portrays an unrealistic or superficial version of sisterhood, but it takes away valuable time during the recruitment process that could be better spent allowing meaningful conversations to happen. As a result, women join a contrived portrayal of a sisterhood instead of a group of women looking to improve their lives and the lives of those around them.

The Superficiality

“ ‘Are you friends with everybody in your chapter?’ That’s the question they (PNM’s) ask to define sisterhood and to be perfectly honest, it’s a blatant lie when recruiting sisters go ‘Yes, I’m best friends with everybody in my chapter.’  And we all know it’s a lie. I personally think that the sisterhood aspect that we sell to our PNM’s isn’t the most genuine that we can tell them about. When you’re in a chapter of 150 women, there’s going to be at least one person that you’re like ‘wow, you are so irritating’ You love them, because they are your sister, but you’re like ‘wow, you’re irritating’.”

“So we teach our members during recruitment that if they get a question about a sister and they don’t know the answer, to just make something up. We want the PNM’s to think that we are all best friends and know everything about one another.”

“Everything we do in recruitment is fake – it is about seeming rather than being.”

All of the issues with sorority recruitment and sisterhood come down to this one concept. The current structure of recruitment on most campuses in one in which a sisterhood of superficiality is front and center. Chapters seeking to establish their social bona fides find themselves in a “race to the bottom” in which they say and do whatever necessary in order to convince potential members that they offer a sisterhood in which everyone has fun all the time and is best friends with one another.

The message that potential members receive throughout recruitment is the wrong message. It is a message that promotes the superficial, social nature of sisterhood, often at the expense of more altruistic notions of sisterhood. Instead of prospective members joining a sisterhood in which women support one another in their endeavors, where they feel a high sense of belonging, and feel held accountable to a set of shared expectations, they join a sisterhood of glitter, bubbles, overly-produced skits, and false expectations.

We need to take a long, hard look at the sorority recruitment process. It is time to move beyond “no frills” and “values-based” and into a world of “promoting a realistic version of sisterhood.” Just getting rid of frills is not enough. We need to develop practices that allow for all levels of sisterhood to be sold to new members – from the social experience to accountability and common purpose. We need to get rid of the superficiality – no more glitter, no more bubbles, no more skits. Glitter, bubbles and skits recruit members who care about the social elements of sisterhood. Replace the glitter and bubbles with meaningful conversations – not about watered-down, abstract values, but about how sorority membership makes you a better person and adds value to your college experience. If we replace glitter with substance, we’ll be recruiting the right women for the right reasons, and sisterhood will grow and thrive as a result.

But don't take my word for it.

Hazing Myth - New Members Want to be Hazed

In my line of work, I get to spend a lot of time having frank, open and honest conversations with chapter leaders about what really goes on in their chapters. In fact, my experience has taught me that bringing in someone from the outside to have confidential conversations with chapter leaders is money incredibly well-spent, because it provides opportunities to cut through the BS and discuss the things really going on in a chapter. Campus visits that offer these types of conversations are often my most productive. In order to get students to think differently about what might be going on in their chapters, it helps to provide them with a safe space to have open, honest conversations about what is actually going on.

I have also written previously of the “regression to the mean” that happens within a given campus context. Over time, fraternity new member programs on any given campus come to generally resemble one another, and a salient campus culture emerges for what a “normal” new member program looks like. Organizations who deviate from this campus culture initially (i.e. a new chapter that begins doing things the right way immediately after colonization) will be pulled towards it over time. Variance within these systems is not rewarded. Fraternity new members hear these myths and are generally aware of the norm when they join a fraternity on campus – they hear stories from their friends in high school and come into an organization expecting a certain amount of hazing, depending on the cultural norms on the campus in question. Sometimes the hazing will be worse than they expected, and sometimes it won’t be quite as bad as they had expected.

Sometimes a chapter will decide, for various reasons (it gets into trouble, it elects a conscientious president, it gets new chapter advisors, etc.), to try to address its hazing culture and deviate in some way from the campus norm. The chapter will choose some of the most dangerous or high risk activities in which it engages and eliminate them from the new member education program.  In doing so, they often make a critical mistake – they fail to replace those high risk activities with other meaningful new member activities. They eliminate hazing, but they put nothing meaningful back in its place. This mistake is the most common one that I see chapters make when they try to address hazing, and it has very predictable consequences.

I recently met with a group of chapter leaders who had made this mistake – they had gotten into trouble two years ago for hazing and had cleaned a few things up in their new member program. They took some bad things away, but they put nothing back in place of those things. The results of this were both typical and predictable – they felt the pledges didn’t come together and didn’t really get much out of the new member period. And they stated to me what many chapter leaders over the years have stated to me after trying to deviate from the campus hazing norm:

“The pledges told us they were disappointed that they weren’t hazed. They wanted us to haze them more.”

My guess is that I am not the only person working in the fraternity/sorority industry who has ever heard a statement like this. I suspect this type of mentality is fairly common.

So how do I respond when I hear this logic?

“When your pledges tell you that they wish they had been hazed more, what they really mean is that they wish their new member experience had been more meaningful.”

Much has been written about adolescent men and their need for meaningful rites of passage. They seek meaning and a deep sense of connection in their experiences. They seek to bond with others in powerful ways. They seek challenge and accomplishment. One of the primary reasons that hazing not only persists but is often glorified as a positive experience is because, in the short term, it provides these feelings of meaning and accomplishment.  Take a group of 20-30 young men and put them through Hell for 12 weeks and they will take a sense of pride and accomplishment out of that experience. They will feel closer to one another because of that experience. They will derive meaning from that experience.

But there are other ways to create a meaningful experience that do not involve hazing. There are ways to facilitate authentic, meaningful conversations that will build trust and connectivity within a group. There are ways to facilitate a sense of accomplishment that do not involve physical or mental abuse. It takes time, energy and creativity to develop and implement these activities. That’s another reason that hazing is so prevalent – it is much easier to implement. Any idiot can scream at a group of pledges who don’t perform well on a pledge test. It takes a little more creativity to facilitate a conversation or activity that facilitates meaningful bonding.

We have failed our fraternities by completely decentralizing the new member education experience and expecting 19-21 year old men to come up with constructive programs on their own. Most chapters simply have not spent the time and energy required to develop meaningful new member education activities. They take the simplest path to creating meaning within their new member programs – they haze. I can offer a brief, bulleted list of what the fraternity new member process looks like in 90 percent of fraternity chapters across America:

• Bid night – get shitfaced.
• Have pledges memorize things from the national new member book. Give them a weekly test. If they fail the test, yell at them and make them do calisthenics.
• Run errands for older members in the name of “getting to know the older members.” This may or may not involve getting signatures in book or soliciting interviews with these older members while performing menial tasks for them.
• Big brother night – get shitfaced again.
• Lots of cleaning.
• Hell Week! Lots of yelling and calisthenics and cleaning and getting shitfaced.
• Initiation. Welcome to the frat, brother. Now let’s get shitfaced!

We have failed to change this pattern because we have failed to help our fraternity chapters develop more meaningful ways to bring a group together. The formula above is prevalent because it is the easiest, simplest way to bring a group of new members together and foster a sense of accomplishment. It requires zero effort, zero creativity, and zero initiative.

If you are a campus-based advisor, here is how you can make a difference: Set a meeting with every fraternity executive board on your campus. Block off two hours for each chapter. Begin the meeting by asking them about the purpose of their new member education program. After hearing their thoughts, provide them with an alternative framework – that the new member education process is about building good members of the chapter. Once they buy into this concept (they will), ask them to make a bulleted list of 8-10 characteristics to describe the ideal chapter member (if we agree that the pledge process is about building good members, it helps to define what a good member looks like). Some chapters will struggle with this, some will not. Push them. Get them to think both in terms of tangible behaviors (i.e. shows up to things, pays his dues) and intangible values (a man of integrity, an honest person, etc.). Once they come up with that list of ideal member qualities, help them brainstorm 3-4 activities for each of those qualities on that list that would either teach that quality to new members or give new members an opportunity to demonstrate or practice that quality. You’ll be amazed at the things that they come up with. So will they. They will amaze themselves at the meaningful activities that they are able to come up with in just a few short hours of brainstorming.

At the end of this exercise, each chapter will have a list of 30-40 MEANINGFUL new member activities that they can use to replace some of the stupid things they are doing that really have no point or purpose. It will make the new member programs on your campus better, and it will reduce the likelihood of hazing creeping back in to the chapter, because everyone, including the new members, will see and understand the benefits of a meaningful  and purposeful new member program.

New members don’t want to be hazed, and I suspect that 90 percent of chapter members don’t want to engage in hazing (10 percent of society has sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies…). Chapters haze because it is the only way they know how to create a meaningful experience for their new members. We need to spend time and energy showing them a better way. We need to invest resources in helping them come up with better ways to provide meaningful experiences in ways that will work towards constructive ends and that are not dangerous, demeaning or degrading.

We need to be better at our jobs. This is a good place to start.